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→World War I
AFter the war he preached the [[Social Gospel]], attacking the brutalization and insecurity of Ford workers<ref> See Reinhold Niebuhr, "Detroit" (radio interview [http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/niebuhr-rediscovered/b8.shtml online]).</ref> and attacked the appeal of the [[Ku Klux Klan]] to Protestants. He collaborated with the nascent labor unions and abandoned the Social Gospel for a form of socialism in the late 1920s; however by 1932 he had dropped the Marxism and socialism. In the 1920s Niebuhr built a national reputation among churchmen as a commentator and analyst of social problems for ''The Christian Century.''
AFter the war he preached the [[Social Gospel]], attacking the brutalization and insecurity of Ford workers<ref> See Reinhold Niebuhr, "Detroit" (radio interview [http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/niebuhr-rediscovered/b8.shtml online]).</ref> and attacked the appeal of the [[Ku Klux Klan]] to Protestants. He collaborated with the nascent labor unions and abandoned the Social Gospel for a form of socialism in the late 1920s; however by 1932 he had dropped the Marxism and socialism. In the 1920s Niebuhr built a national reputation among churchmen as a commentator and analyst of social problems for ''The Christian Century.''
Critical for his rejection of liberal optimism was his realization that factory work was horrible. He told his diary:
:We went through one of the big automobile factories to-day. . . . The foundry interested me particularly. The heat was terrific. The men seemed weary. Here manual labour is a drudgery and toil is slavery. The men cannot possibly find any satisfaction in their work. They simply work to make a living. Their sweat and their dull pain are part of the price paid for the fine cars we all run. And most of us run the cars without
knowing what price is being paid for them. . . . We are all
responsible. We all want the things which the factory produces and none of us is sensitive enough to care how much
in human values the efficiency of the modern factory costs"
<ref> Niebuhr, ''Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic'' pp. 79-80)</ref>.
The problem is that Niebuhr never talked to the workers. He assumed they were automatons with crushed feelings. In fact, as many studies of assembly lines have shown, the work may have been dull but the workers had complex motivations and boasted about their jobs and tried hard to place their sons on the assembly line. Ford tried and failed to control work habits, then, after extensive sociological studies in which they DID interview the workers, management realized that the workers' were much more interested in controlling their home life than their work life. The Ford solution was [[welfare capitalism]], paying very high wages with added benefits, such as vacations and retirement, that reduced turnover amd appealed primarily to family men. Niebuhr should have asked his own parishioners.<ref> Stephen Meyer, ''The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921,'' (1981); David Brody, ''Workers in Industrial America,'' (1980) ch 2 on welfare capitalism in 1920s; see also Richard M. Steers and Lyman W. Porter, eds. ''Motivation and Work Behavior'' (1979)
===Theology===
===Theology===